To re-create the lives and work of George and Margaret Gey, I relied on the holdings of
the George Gey archives at the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives (AMCMA) at Johns
Hopkins Medical School; the Tissue Culture Association Archives (TCAA) at the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County; the personal archives of Gey’s family; as well as on academic
papers, and interviews with family, colleagues, and scientists in the fields of cancer research
and cell culture.
Prologue
The estimate of the possible weight of HeLa cells comes from Leonard Hayflick, who cal-
culated the greatest possible weight potential of a normal human cell strain as 20 million met-
ric tons and says HeLa’s potential would be “infinitely greater” since it’s not bound by the Hay-
flick limit. As Hayflick wrote to me in an email: “If we were to grow HeLa for just 50 population
doublings it would yield 50 million metric tons if all the cells were saved. Clearly that is im-
practical to do.” For more information on the growth potential of a normal cell, see Hayflick
and Moorehead, “The Serial Cultivation of Human Diploid Cell Strains,” Experimental Cell Re-
search 25 (1961).
For the articles about the Lacks family I refer to, see “Miracle of HeLa,” Ebony (June 1976)
and “Family Takes Pride in Mrs. Lacks’ Contribution,” Jet (April 1976).
The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks